Monday, March 19, 2012

Matt de la Peña's advice to aspiring writers

When people find out that I am a writer, I am a Technical Writer, and that I have successful blogs, they often pitch ideas to me.

They also will come to me for advice, I tell them to write, they need to produce lots of bad material, so they can learn how to produce good material.

I learned that years ago from Jerry Pournelle, he tells writers that, but I believe Matt de la Peña's words below show that:
He told them that if they were serious about writing, they had to be ready to accept lots of failure. He once wrote a poem for a girl he liked, but after reading it, she never spoke to him again. His goal as a writer, he said, “is to give grace and dignity to people from the other side of the tracks.” 
~from page two http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/education/racial-lens-used-to-cull-curriculum-in-arizona.html

That NYT article is about the controversy over Matt de la Peña book Mexican WhiteBoy, being pulled from an Arizona school.

For more on this author see his website http://www.mattdelapena.com/ 

For the book mentioned see Mexican WhiteBoy

Thursday, March 8, 2012

DoJ reportedly planning antitrust suit against Apple, publishers over e-books

Full story at Apple Insider, as a fan of Ebooks I hope this goes to trial, but Apple and the Publishers involved will probably want to settle out of court to avoid the publicity.

Because that would increase awareness of their role in raising Ebook prices.